Abbott's call to combat diabetes

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has urged a cultural change
in the Australian lifestyle after a new study showing 100,000
adults develop diabetes each year.

Mr Abbott's call came as he released figures, collated by the
International Diabetes Institute (IDI) that showed 275 people a day
were developing the disease.

The disease doubles a sufferer's chance of dying over the next
five years.

The study identified obesity, poor diet and inactivity as
factors leading to what IDI director Paul Zimmet termed a "diabetes
epidemic".

Mr Abbott said the study's "alarming findings" called for a
"culture shift" in the Australian way of life.

"I could talk endlessly about different government programs, but
in the end it is very important that all of us take responsibility
for exercising and for eating well," he said.

"In the end, this is not going to be beaten by governments.

"It's going to be beaten by people.

"Government can't make people walk to work. We can't make people
walk to school. We can't make people give up the Magnum
(ice-cream)."

Last year, more than 200,000 people progressed from being
overweight to obese, 400,000 adults developed hypertension and
270,000 adults developed chronic kidney disease.

Professor Zimmet said the research sent a red alert to ordinary
Australians and to those responsible for public health.

The epidemic was costing taxpayers more than $3 billion a year,
Prof Zimmet said, and the figure would rise dramatically.

The first stage of the study - conducted in 1999/2000 and
involving more than 11,000 people - showed 1 million people had
diabetes, a further 2 million had prediabetes (high blood sugar
levels) and more than 60 per cent of adults were either overweight
or obese.

A follow-up study five years later found people's waistlines had
increased on average by 2.1cm and their weight by 1.4 kg.

The diabetes epidemic was being driven by lifestyle factors,
particularly the dramatic increase in obesity, poor diet and
physical inactivity, Prof Zimmet said.

But there was also a social element to the problem, he said, as
"exercise is being geared out of lives".

"In the new suburbs going up around Sydney and Melbourne there
are no footpaths. Car is king."

People with prediabetes were 15 times more likely to develop
diabetes than those with normal blood sugar levels, while obese
people were four times more likely to develop diabetes than those
with normal weight, the study found.

People with high blood pressure were three times more likely to
develop diabetes than those who had normal blood pressure, and
physically inactive people had twice the risk of developing
diabetes than those who were active.

The institute's deputy director, Associate Professor Jonathan
Shaw, said the "inexorable rise in (people's) weight" identified in
the research was of most concern.

"That's the thing that's driving so many of the other problems,
particularly in relation to diabetes," he said.